Love Took Him Away

I received a letter in the mail several weeks ago from an old friend. If you shared a conversation with him, you would assume him to be fairly rational, for a street person.

In my case, there was a time I spoke with him where he seemed rather nervous, excited, and about the happiest I had ever seen him. When I would ask him why he was that way, he would say, “David, you wouldn’t believe me, no one would. But I have met the most beautiful woman on this or any other world.”

This is Jason’s story.

I wouldn’t have believed a word of what he said if I hadn’t been there when it happened. When you finish reading, you may even think me crazy as Jason, but I don’t care.

I know what I heard.

I know what I saw.

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To look at Jason, you wouldn’t notice anything special about him. That is, if you looked at him at all, your first impression would probably be he needs to get a shave and buy some new shoes.

Jason lives a day-to-day existence. He works out of a day labor outfit in Omaha, and lives in a boarding house on Farnum Street.

He weighs in near two-twenty, blond hair, and usually spends most of his time when he isn’t working, in his room watching TV, or he would be at the corner store playing video games, or, as of late, he started spending most of his free time at a strip joint.

Jason pretty much gets along with everyone. He has that kind of boyish charm about himself, and for as much as he weighs, and as tall as he is; Jason doesn’t use it to get his way by bullying or intimidating people.

Jason started going to the strip club about six weeks before he left Omaha. When he wasn’t at the club, he would bend my ear telling me about a stripper there named, Carrie.

It was Carrie this and Carrie that. Carrie’s in love with him and wants to make him happy. You have to understand, I’ve known Jason a long time and it was hard for me to believe a stripper would go for someone that dresses the way he does. Jason would never have more than ten dollars in his pocket at one time and couldn’t save a twenty if his life depended on it. He always did make enough money to cover his weekly rent and buy his daily meals, and a pack of cigarettes every day. Saving for a rainy day wasn’t in Jason’s vocabulary or his list of things to do this week or any other week for that matter. The bottom line: Jason lived just like a street person and lived on his own terms.

If it rained, he stayed home. If he had too much to drink the night before, he stayed home. If he was sober and the day was good, he would get out there and work just as hard as any other man. Jason was always easy to speak with, but no girl in her right mind would bring him home to meet the parents.

Things started to change for Jason. You could see the difference almost immediately if not sooner. His hair was cut and styled. He wore new shoes. No more of the hole-in-the-toe tennis shoes, but real leather. He went from blue jeans and a faded biker jacket to casual wear, and several times I even saw him wearing a suit and tie.

I cornered him one time and asked if he had won the lottery.

“Nope, actually it’s Carrie. Remember me telling you about her? You know, the dancer across the street? She went out and bought me everything you see. The girl is stone-cold in love with me.”

I found that hard to believe. Here was a guy who had to borrow five dollars from me to get to work, buy a pack of cigarettes and a cheap sandwich, but there he was, now sitting in his own car, a brand new LTD, Ford no less.

I was having a difficult time soaking all this in, but I saw it all with my own eyes; Jason had changed in both appearance and attitude. Jason wasn’t the street-talking person he used to be. He actually sounded educated, almost worldly.

That night, I decided to go to this strip club where this girl Carrie, danced. I had to see for myself what she looked like.

When I entered, there was a huge hulk of a man at the entryway.

“Five bucks to see the action, pal.”

“Okay, but can you tell me if Carrie is dancing tonight?”

“Carrie? Carrie who? We don’t have any chick with that name dancing here. Maybe across town, or in Council Bluffs, but not here, pal.”

“Thanks.” I turned to leave and as I walked outside, I saw Jason pull into the parking lot. I watched as he got out of his car and slip through a side door leading into the club, with another large bruiser at the door collecting the entry fee.

I decided to go back, and once the entry fee was paid, I was caught up in the vast assortment of neon-ceiling lights from one end of the club to the other. The place was filled with all sorts of men from tall to short, young and old, and skinny to slobbish looking. They were sitting either at tables, barstools, or in chairs that ringed around the dance stage; which at the moment, a very shapely brunette who wore nothing more than a pair of pale blue panty-clad tights and high heels. Her breasts seemed out of proportion with the rest of her body, and really didn’t move an inch while she gyrated on stage for the whistling and paying customers. She was a decent dancer, and in the low lighting on stage, she looked attractive, but I still thought I’d be afraid to turn the lights on if I had to really look at her up close and personal.

I continued walking around the club until I finally saw Jason sitting at a table in a darkened corner of the club. I almost didn’t see him what with the thick fog of cigarette smoke held in the air. The large crowd of men didn’t help maneuvering around any easier either.

As I walked over to him, I noticed he had two drinks on the table. As I walked closer, I could see he was talking to someone, but who? He was sitting alone.

“Hey, Jason. What’s going on, buddy?”

“Pull up a seat, David. I want you to meet, Carrie.”

Pulling a chair away from an empty table, and as I sat down a cocktail waitress dressed about as skimpy as the dancer, except she was wearing a tube-top, asked me what I wanted to drink. I told her.

“Stacey,” blurted Jason. “It’s on me. While you’re at it, bring us a refill.”

Stacey bent over and whispered in my ear.

“You know this guy? He’s strange, baby. Buys drinks all night long. Sits at this same table damn near every night, drinks both drinks and swears up and down there’s some girl sitting with him. If you ask me, I think the guy is whacked; know what I mean?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him, okay? Just bring us our drinks.”

Stacey rolls her eyes around as she straightened herself to head back to the bar. I heard her under her breath, “Fuck me, another looney-tune.”

I looked over at Jason and listened as he continued to talk to an empty chair.

“Isn’t she about the best-looking woman you’ve ever seen, David?”

Jason turned and went back to talking to the chair again.

“I know, Carrie, but he’s my best friend. Yeah, I told him about you. What? Huh? No, you, don’t say that, no! You can’t mean that!”

“Mean what, Jason?” I asked.

“She told me she’s leaving after we leave here tonight. She said she can’t stay any longer and it’s time for her to go back home. See, I sort of promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about her, but I thought; you being my best friend and all, that it would be all right, but it wasn’t.”

Stacey came back with the drinks.

“That’ll be $22.50.”

Jason reached in his billfold and handed her two twenties. “Keep the change.”

Stacey believed Jason was really out there but didn’t think his money was. She stuffed both twenties inside her tube-top and then she went on to another table.

I decided to humor Jason. I looked at the empty chair and said, “Carrie, you don’t have to leave. As far as I know, I’m the only person Jason’s told, and I promise, your secret is safe with me.”

I felt stupid doing that. I could almost feel every set of eyes in the bar zeroing in on me. Try it sometime. Talk to an empty chair and see if you don’t feel singled out in the crowd. I know I did.

“What? Really?” Jason turned to me, all smiles this time.

“Carrie says she believes you, but she still has to leave. David, she’s asked me to go with her, can you believe this? She wants me to go back to her home.”

Jason turned back facing the empty chair again and said, “Yes, Carrie, I’d love to go back with you. I love you so much. I’ll go anywhere you go.”

“Aah, where does she call home, Jason?”

Jason pointed his right index finger at the ceiling. “Up there.”

Now I knew Jason was losing it. If he knew what I was thinking, then he knew I knew he needed professional help.

“Let’s go, David, she’s ready to leave.”

Jason stood, walked around behind the empty chair where the invisible Carrie was supposedly sitting and pulled the chair back. I sat there pretending to see Carrie stand up. Then I stood. I took one last look at the table, and I realized all the drinks he had ordered for him and Carrie were empty. I never saw him drink but a couple of drinks while I was there, but there were seven empty glasses, mine included.

I followed Jason and his invisible Carrie out into a cool evening. The guy at the door shook his head at Jason, looked at me and with a finger, he rolled it in a circular motion next to his head; the act of saying Jason was crazy.

We got into his Ford LTD with me in the back seat, Jason behind the wheel and the invisible Carrie next to him.

Jason drove nearly thirty miles before he stopped the car out near an empty field of corn that had already been shucked, and brow beaten by crows and the weather. We got out and walked about thirty yards before Jason spoke.

“This is it, David.” He threw me the keys to the car.

“You’ll need these to get back, and I’ve already signed the title over to you, and here’s my money. The rest in in the glove box. Take it and have a good time. Of all the people I’ve known, you were the only one who never quit on me, and always helped me when I needed it most. Who knows, maybe you’ll run into a girl like Carrie, and have the same kind of luck I did.”

I just couldn’t stand there and listen any longer.

“Jason, this has to stop right now. I don’t know what has made you this way, or where or how you got the car, the clothes, the money, and who knows what else, but you’re living in a fantasy, man! Wake up, will you! She isn’t real. You’re real. I’m real, but this Carrie, isn’t! Can’t you see that?”

“Relax, David. Trust me, she’s real. You don’t get it yet, do you? You can’t see her, and neither can anyone else except for me. She’s come to earth to find love, and I’m it. She’s taking me back to her world to meet her family and friends. I’m going to be part of her world, her life—forever. It’s just that simple.”

“But, but … Jason, this isn’t real. Another world? Listen to what you’re saying! You’re playing in your own make believe fanta—”

And that’s when it happened.

A silver and almost golden light came from a darkness of the sky at first and centered on Jason. As the light fully covered him, that was when for the first time, I really did see her … Carrie.

If my eyes hadn’t been attached to the sockets, they would have bulged right out and hit the ground. She stood there and was every bit as beautiful as Jason described.

“See, David? I told you, didn’t I? Isn’t she the most incredible looking woman you’ve ever seen?”

I was too stunned for words. I could only nod my head.

“Goodbye, David. I won’t be back. I have no reason to come back. Best to you, my friend.”

“Yes, David. One day you shall find your star as I have found my Jason.”

It was the first and only words from her I heard, and they rang in my ears in melodic rapture, almost sensual, and the sound of her voice made me tremble in an excitable state. I was witnessing something I could have never dreamed possible, and Jason was going to live out those dreams. For some reason, two old TV shows came to mind: The Outer Limits and One Step Beyond.

As the light lifted them away, I stood watching, waving goodbye but for only a second when my eyes blinked once and the light pulling them away at a blinding speed, vanished.

They were gone.

I stood in that field almost an hour trying to make sense out of something that shouldn’t have made any sense at all. I gave up trying and headed back to the car, sat inside and just stared into the open field the rest of the night.

When the sun started to rise, and its glare began to cover the land, I started the car and drove back to my place.

The wallet he gave me was filled with several hundred-dollar bills, fifty and twenty-dollar bills, almost ten-thousand dollars. In the glove box were three envelopes filled with cash to the tune of another hundred-thousand! Jason had left me more money in that single moment than I could have ever imagined making, yet alone seeing.

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It’s been two years and Jason has yet to be seen by myself, or any of the people he used to hang around with.

The police got in on the act to find him when the day labor place he worked for reported him missing, saying he never missed a day in three years excluding bad weather (which was a lie, but who’s counting?).

The police asked everyone who knew Jason, the last time they saw or spoke to him, and where, but that proved futile. I knew they would never find him. They questioned me, but I lied to them. If I had told them the truth, well, we know how much they would have believed, don’t we?

I’ve been in that on and off again dating scene, no one girl special, but who knows, I might get lucky and find another Carrie.

Oh, and that letter I got from Jason? No postmark. It just showed up in my mailbox. No stamp, no return address. Just a two-page letter detailing his new life.

He now has two sons and a daughter, and he and Carrie are expecting again. Jason had to get a special operation. Where he’s at, Jason needs three lungs in order to breathe properly on his new world. Shades of the Twilight Zone, no less.

Other than that, he said he’s doing fine and has never been happier. He and Carrie named one of their sons after me. Jason said it was Carrie’s idea.

I guess that’s why I drive out to the cornfield at night and sit in the car and wait. Who knows, if not tonight, maybe another time will be my lucky night.

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This is the first in a series of 9 mini-stories I bring to you.

Next coming: Strangers No More.